No quick fix for aging gas lines

Scott KrausOF THE MORNING CALL

In the aftermath of Wednesday night's cataclysmic explosion on N. 13th Street in Allentown, UGI crews tore up the street in a desperate effort to stanch the flow of natural gas through a cast-iron pipe that was installed in 1928, the year penicillin was discovered.

Brittle old lines have been targeted for replacement in recent years by regulators and gas companies, which now use mostly plastic or steel when building new lines to carry gas to their customers.

While presumed to be a gas explosion, the exact source of the blast that killed five people and leveled most of a city block has not been determined, though crews did zero in on an area of pipe Saturday night that they will be examining this morning. If there was a leak, it could have come from a crack in the subterranean gas main, a damaged service line or a faulty appliance in one of the homes that was destroyed.

But the scope of destruction has put a spotlight on the aging cast-iron lines and a lengthy replacement schedule that would leave them in service for decades. Gas companies replace some of the pipes every year, but it's a costly proposition -- about $1 million a mile -- and like so many other types of infrastructure, no one wants to pay for a wholesale upgrade.

"These distribution systems, especially the older ones, have lots of leaks," said Carl Weimer, executive director of the Pipeline Safety Trust, a Bellingham, Wash., group that advocates pipeline safety.

According to the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission, the state is home to 46,318 miles of natural gas distribution lines. Of those, there are 3,199 miles of cast iron and 9,359 miles of bare steel pipe that together account for about 76 percent of leaks.

"These pipes should be replaced with more durable plastic lines," noted a February 2010 PUC report on the natural gas industry. "Replacement costs are estimated at $13 billion over 20 years."

While corrosion is the hobgoblin of steel pipes, the problem with the old cast-iron lines is that they are brittle and can crack, industry experts say, especially in the winter when earth thaws and refreezes, allowing pipelines to shift up and down.

Two of the four UGI gas explosions that occurred in the last decade in the Lehigh Valley -- in Palmer Township in 2002 and in Bethlehem in 2007 -- were attributed to this kind of "earth movement," according to PUC records.

Not including Wednesday's blast, PUC records show that UGI has had 11 gas explosions or serious incidents in Pennsylvania since 2001, including two other local blasts: in 2003 in Macungie and 2006 in Allentown. The 11 incidents resulted in one injury and more than $3.5 million in property damage.

Natural gas is lighter than air, so when an underground leak occurs, the gas tries to rise to the surface, Weimer said. If the lines run under grass, the gas is likely to filter to the surface and dissipate into the air. But when the ground is frozen, or the pipeline is covered by macadam or concrete, it can't always escape upward. Instead, it finds the path of least resistance.

If the Allentown blast is blamed on a gas main leak, investigators will probably find that the gas traveled along the outside of gas, water or sewer lines into the basement of a house, where it collected until it reached a concentration that could be ignited by a spark or heat source such as a furnace, said Mark McDonald, president of the New England Gas Workers Association.

"It will follow the gas line, the water line, any line that goes into your basement," McDonald said. "The draft is actually pulling it in."

In 2009, new federal regulations required gas utilities to draft formal plans to maintain and monitor distribution lines for leaks, said Terry Fitzpatrick, a former chairman of the PUC and now executive director of the Energy Association of Pennsylvania, an industry group.

The PUC tracks these efforts, but it has limited resources.

"We monitor the companies' inspections and we make sure they do the inspections they are required to do," said PUC spokeswoman Jennifer Kocher. "We do some spot checks on our own, but we have nine inspectors and 35 gas utilities."

UGI President John Walsh said at a press conference the day after the blast that a leak detection crew covered the 500 block of N. 13th Street the day before the blast. The crew used a vehicle-mounted "flame ionization" system to scan the streets as part of a routine inspection program, said UGI spokesman Dan Adamo.

It probably covered dozens if not hundreds of city blocks that day, driving at low speed, Adamo said.

The system is designed to detect even trace amounts of gas leaking from a main and seeping through cracks in the pavement, sidewalk or sewer grates. No leak was detected, Walsh said.

"We had no calls, no complaints of gas smells," he said. "They just happened to be in that neighborhood that day."

Critics like McDonald say these "drive-by" scans aren't foolproof and are subject to human error. They also don't cover service lines, the smaller pipes that carry gas from the main into customers' homes, and could miss gas if it's not flowing directly to the surface.

UGI, which reported $83.1 million in profit from its gas utility last year, is gradually replacing its cast-iron lines. It replaces about 8 miles of pipeline a year, spending about $20 million annually on upgrades, Walsh said in a statement Saturday. About 7 percent of the utility's nearly 5,500 miles of natural gas lines are cast iron, he said.

"We use several factors in decisions about replacing infrastructure, and the bottom line is always safety," Walsh said, adding that "the natural gas infrastructure is the nation's safest energy delivery system."

PUC records show that in 2007, UGI replaced or removed 10 miles of cast-iron pipe from service. In 2008, that removal rate fell to six miles, leaving 412.8 miles of cast-iron pipe in service. At its current rate, it would take UGI roughly 50 years to replace all of its cast-iron pipe.

Nationwide, natural gas companies reported that 2.9 percent of their distribution lines were cast or wrought iron in 2009, and 5.6 percent of their distribution lines predate 1940. About 10 percent of UGI's lines date back that far, according to U.S. Department of Transportation records.

Older northeastern cities like Allentown typically have a higher concentration of aging cast-iron gas lines, said Robert Malanga, president of Fire & Risk Engineering, a New Jersey consulting firm.

But just because a gas line is old doesn't mean it is dangerous, said Christina Sames, vice president of operations and engineering at the American Gas Association.

"Age really is only one factor," Sames said. "What does matter is the operating history. How was that pipe maintained?" Cast-iron pipes can be decades old, but still function well. Plastic pipes don't corrode but are susceptible to accidental damage from excavation, she said.

There is no requirement for gas companies to tear up any particular type of main, said Fitzpatrick, the former PUC chairman.

It's not that the utility companies wouldn't like to replace the old lines, they'd just like to charge their customers for it. In 2008, they formed a group called Pennsylvanians for Renewed Natural Gas Infrastructure to press for legislation that would allow gas companies to charge a dedicated fee to all their customers for infrastructure modernization, rather than recovering the costs over time by making rate hike requests.

Morgan K. O'Brien, president and CEO of Peoples Natural Gas in Western Pennsylvania, wrote an op-ed piece in The Morning Call last year supporting the legislation, and saying, "There is no question that gas companies should accelerate the rate of replacing these pipes."

Since 1997, water companies have imposed a similar fee that ranges from a few cents to $2.75 per bill, but the gas industry's effort went nowhere, Fitzpatrick said. The economy was falling apart, gas prices were high and it was hard to get lawmakers to embrace the idea of adding a new fee to constituents' utility bills, he said.

Utilities are gradually replacing old distribution lines, which are their "bread and butter," Fitzpatrick said, but they have limited resources, and many publicly held companies must keep shareholders happy.

"Theoretically, it's possible to make things safer, but at some point we do a cost-benefit analysis on that," Fitzpatrick said. "We can throw a ton of money at things, but that is money that doesn't go toward other things."

The PUC monitors gas utilities' replacement programs, Kocher said. If a company has a lot of "at-risk" pipe, it will encourage faster replacement. In extreme cases it will order a company to speed it up. UGI hasn't been ordered to do so.

One short-term solution is to add state inspectors and do more to make sure utilities are performing adequate leak surveys and maintenance, said McDonald of the gas workers union, but with many states facing piles of debt, that's unlikely.

"The solution to today's problem is increased surveys, increased oversight," McDonald said. "The endpoint solution [of replacement] can't be today's solution. There is not enough oversight, maintenance and repairs."

After visiting the scene Friday, U.S. Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., wrote a letter to the federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, urging the agency to increase grant funding that helps states' pipeline inspection and safety efforts.

"The grants program is critical to averting such tragic events as the one in Allentown and previous gas line explosions in the Lehigh Valley," Casey wrote.

There are a few things gas customers can do to protect themselves in the meantime, said attorney Barbrae Lundberg, whose Visalia, Calif., firm has represented clients who have been injured or whose family members were killed in explosions.

If the Allentown blast was caused by a leak in one of the cast-iron distribution lines, that might be a result of a phenomenon called "odor fade," she said. In some cases, gas that travels through a lot of soil before reaching the air can be stripped of the rotten-egg-like smell or odorant that gas companies add to give customers a warning that there is a leak, she said.

If they can afford it, gas customers can have the gas lines they are responsible for -- everything from the meter into their house -- inspected on a regular basis by a heating contractor or plumber.

They also can invest in a gas detector, which retails for about $60 and works like smoke and carbon monoxide detectors.

"The one overriding thing that we know," Lundberg said, is that "you really can't rely only on your sense of smell."